Hi everyone, this is the developer, Tenkajin IceCream.

It's been almost a week since TOHOTOPIA launched in Early Access, and I wanted to share an update with all of you on what me and my partner have been working on this past week, along with our plans for what's coming next in EA.

1. What we worked on this past week

• Right after launch, we pushed out three emergency patches as quickly as we could (V0.7.1i, V0.7.1j, V0.7.1k), fixing a number of freezes and launch-failure issues, cleaning up a lot of incorrect game units, and adjusting some translation problems. That said, it's still nowhere near enough. The game may still encounter serious issues such as freezes and failure to launch, and there are still many in-game combat bugs, sluggish UI interactions, translation errors, UI overflow issues, and so on — not to mention all the optimization issues like incorrect art asset resolutions, high CPU usage, online networking problems, and more.

• We've also addressed the pricing error in Chinese-speaking regions and put together a refund and compensation plan. This was entirely due to my own oversight. Sorting it out took some of our time as well — thank you so much for your patience, and I'm truly sorry.

2. Update frequency going forward

Our current plan is to release a small update roughly every 1–2 weeks, addressing various bugs, optimizations, and translation issues.
If we run into a more severe problem, we'll do our best to push out an update within 1–2 days.
Every 1–2 months, there may be a larger update, which could include adding a new system, adding a new faction, reworking an entire module, or rolling out balance adjustments.

The exact cadence will be adjusted based on actual development progress.

3. What we plan to work on next month

① Core bug fixes and optimization

• Prioritizing fixes for serious issues like failure to launch and freezes

• Fixing various bugs in combat logic and visual display

• Going through all the community feedback from this past week and addressing them one by one — this includes various interaction improvements, BGM tweaks, cloud save support, and so on

② Multiplayer improvements

• Reworking the multiplayer lobby system: customizable room names, a "Ready" function, faction selection for AI players, and more

• Adding team PvP and team PvE modes, and adding a turn-timer option for online matches

• Various smaller refinements to the overall online experience

③ Hakurei Empire development

• Developing the fifth faction — the Hakurei Empire

④ Balance pass

• Once the Hakurei Empire is ready, we'll do an overall balance pass across all five factions

⑤ Translation fixes

• Going through community feedback and fixing various translation issues

• Fixing translation-related issues such as UI overflow and inappropriate font sizes

• Improving the multi-language MOD tools

⑥ Ongoing community feedback

• Fixing new bugs and optimization items we hadn't noticed before

• Adopting reasonable suggestions (response time may be delayed by around a week)

4. The bigger picture of EA

In addition to long-term, ongoing bug fixes and balance adjustments,

Content already confirmed for future EA updates:

• Four new Empire factions: Hakurei Empire, Toyosatomimi Empire, Nippaku Empire, and Myouren Empire

• New story content, new tutorials, achievements, save system, spectator mode, replays, and more

• More dialogue and interaction content between characters

Content we're considering for the EA roadmap:
Steam Workshop MOD support, additional victory conditions, an iteration of the tech / culture / economy systems, custom maps, campaigns, and so on.
These will be adjusted through ongoing feedback and discussion with the community.

5. About the DLC

Honestly, it probably isn't ideal to be discussing DLC content before EA has even finished, but because of the pricing-error situation in certain regions, I had already publicly committed to sharing the DLC plan — so I'd like to make it official here as well.

DLC1 — Multi-faction expansion pack: Tengu Empire, InvincibleAmazingEmpire

This DLC has not entered development yet. This is just a heads-up.

6. A few final words

Since launch, we've received far more attention and feedback than we ever expected. Me and my partner are genuinely happy about it, but at the same time we're feeling a lot of pressure. We originally started this project because we wanted to make a Touhou fan-game — partly because we wanted to "build something we love ourselves" and develop it at our own pace, and partly because, honestly, neither of us is what you'd call a seasoned professional developer. So please try not to set the bar too high for us.

That said, the attention and feedback we've received has definitely pushed us to pick up the pace, hold ourselves to higher standards, and put more care into polishing the smaller details of the game. We're also thinking about using Steam Workshop MOD in the future to fill in the gaps where we fell short.

Thank you so much for being our motivation. Even with the faster pace, me and my partner are still working through everything in a somewhat clumsy, single-threaded loop: bug fixes → new content development → community feedback → game promotion, and so on. To follow ZUN-sensei's guidelines regarding Touhou fan-games on Steam, we won't be looking for a third-party publisher — that's something we can't and won't do. For now, the two of us will be handling all distribution and operations on our own.

Lastly, thank you so much for all your support. We genuinely love hearing from the community. To keep development moving forward, we'll be focusing our energy on development work first. On top of that, I rely quite heavily on translation tools to communicate with friends outside of the Chinese-speaking community, so our response time to community feedback may be a bit slow at times. Thank you for understanding.